Miles O'Brien
Caption: O'Brien in 2364 Gender: Male Species: Human Born: September 2328 Father: Michael O'Brien Children: Molly and Kirayoshi Wife: Keiko O'Brien Played by: Colm Meaney Caption: O'Brien in 2369 Caption: O'Brien in 2375 Miles Edward O'Brien was born in Killarney in Ireland, Earth in September 2328. Career In 2346, at the age of 18, O'Brien joined Starfleet as an enlisted crewman. His father had wanted Miles to take up a place at the Aldebaran Music Academy and become a concert performer, but he chose to join up instead. One of his first assignments was aboard the [[USS Rutledge|USS Rutledge]], under the command of Benjamin Maxwell, where he served as junior Tactical Officer during the Cardassian War. A year later, O'Brien was present in the aftermath of the Setlik III massacre, where his technical skill was useful in repairing a field transporter, allowing himself and thirteen other Starfleet personnel to escape a Cardassian patrol. This earned him a promotion to primary Tactical Officer. O'Brien also served as part of a squad to aid the survivors of the massacre as Cardassians were still patrolling the settlement; he helped a group of women and children but was ambushed by two Cardassians. He was able to incapacitate one of them but he got into a fight with the other and was forced to kill his assailant. Until then, O'Brien had never killed anything or anyone (he was even worried about swatting mosquitoes as a child) and the incident left him with a deep-seated resentment towards Cardassians, bordering on outright racism on occasion. Many years later, he remarked to Glinn Telle that it was not Cardassians that he hated, but rather the person he became because of them. (TNG: "The Wounded") O'Brien transferred to the [[USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)|USS Enterprise-D]] in 2364, with the rank of chief petty officer, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. During the Farpoint mission, he was assigned as relief flight controller (wearing a command division uniform). He also stood duty in the security department, but was most often seen filling duty as transporter chief, where he was involved in, among other events, the rescue of Captain Picard from the Borg in 2367. :In "Where Silence Has Lease", O'Brien was shown (and referred to) as a full lieutenant working as transporter chief. During the Klingon Civil War, O'Brien also made use of his training as a tactical officer, following Lieutenant Worf's resignation from Starfleet. As a result, he was heavily involved in the deployment and maintenance of the tachyon detection grid that ultimately decided the conflict. (TNG: "Redemption, Part II") In 2368, Miles was forced to confront his former commanding officer, when Captain Maxwell went rogue, launching attacks on Cardassian outposts and ships. It was O'Brien's knowledge of transporter systems that allowed him to beam aboard Maxwell's ship, the ''Phoenix'', whilst her shields were up, giving him a chance to reason with Maxwell, and ultimately preventing further bloodshed. (TNG: "The Wounded") By 2369, O'Brien had been operating transporters for 22 years. His preferred transporter room aboard the Enterprise was number three. In that year, O'Brien left the Enterprise, transferring to Deep Space 9, with a promotion, assigned the role of chief of operations. His primary task during the early days of his posting was to repair the damage done during the withdrawal of the Cardassians from the station. He was instrumental in moving the station from its orbit of Bajor out to the Denorios Belt, following the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole. Not long after, O'Brien received a note on his record for violating the Prime Directive, after assisting in the escape of a Tosk, one of the first contacts from the Gamma Quadrant, disobeying direct orders from Commander Sisko. (DS9: "Captive Pursuit") He later found himself thrust into local Bajoran politics and folklore, when visiting a remote village on the planet. Following the death of the local sirah, O'Brien was thrust into the role, forcing him to try and maintain the unity and strength of the inhabitants against a Dal'Rok. (DS9: "The Storyteller") In 2370, O'Brien was assisting the T'Lani and Kellerun militaries in disarming and neutralizing their harvester weapons when a sabotage attempt exposed him to deadly nanobiogenic gel. In the resultant escape and rescue, he almost succumbed to his injuries, but was saved by Julian Bashir, an act which developed their friendship (see Personal). Several months later, while assisting in preparations for a Parada peace conference on Parada II, O'Brien was kidnapped and replaced with an exact duplicate (a replicant), created to disrupt the conference. That O'Brien later died after becoming aware of the threat, and the original was recovered by DS9 personnel. In December of that year, O'Brien was arrested by Cardassian forces, and put on trial for allegedly supplying weapons to the Maquis. The charges were later discovered to be part of a conspiracy to discredit the Federation and give the Cardassian Union a stronger position on which to negotiate, and Miles was released. O'Brien was killed in 2371, after becoming infected with delta-series radioisotopes following an accident aboard the station. This had the effect, coupled with the presence of a cloaked Romulan warbird nearby, of shifting him forward in time by several hours. His death occured when he deliberately contaminated himself further, in order to determine the exact cause of events he had witnessed. He was 'replaced' by his counterpart from the timeline he visited. Thus, events that occurred to O'Brien from this point on involved the future version, rather than the 'original'. When the Klingons attacked and invaded Deep Space Nine in January of 2372, O'Brien defended Ops against boarding parties, suffering minor injuries in the attack. At the time of the attack, O'Brien had been completing the retrofit of the station's weapons arrays. Later that year, Miles was temporarily relieved of his duties by Captain Sisko, following a visit to the planet Argratha. O'Brien had been (falsely) accused of espionage, and was given the simulated memory of a 20-year prison sentence. O'Brien became paranoid and emotionally distressed upon returning to the station, attempting suicide on at least one occasion. In late 2372, O'Brien commented that his career had included service on half-a-dozen ships. Even though none of those vessels had cloaking devices, O'Brien was so used to the Defiant being cloaked that he felt vulnerable onboard uncloaked ships. In 2373, O'Brien took part in an infiltration mission to the fortified Klingon moon of Ty'Gokor, in an attempt to expose Gowron as a Changeling. For the mission, Miles had to be surgically altered to appear Klingon. (DS9: "Apocalypse Rising") O'Brien was partly responsible, along with Rom and Jadzia Dax, for creating and deploying the self-replicating minefield that blocked Dominion ships from entering the Alpha Quadrant, an event which precipitated the Dominion War. Miles abandoned the station with the rest of the station's Starfleet compliment, taking station aboard the [[USS Defiant (NX-74205)|USS Defiant]], where he remained for the first three months of the war. Along with the rest of the DS9 command crew, O'Brien was pulled from front-line duty to take a captured Jem'Hadar vessel behind enemy lines. Despite his love of field rations, O'Brien bemoaned the lack of a replicator aboard the commandeered vessel. When the vessel crashlanded shortly after achieving its objective, O'Brien tore his uniform, much to his chagrin, and the amusement of his colleagues. Following their rescue by the ''Rotarran'', Miles took part in Operation Return, after which he resumed his duties aboard the newly-retaken Deep Space Nine. Shortly thereafter, he played a ceremonial role in the wedding of Jadzia Dax and Worf. In mid-2374, O'Brien was recruited by Starfleet Intelligence to infiltrate the Orion Syndicate arm on Farius Prime. During the mission, Miles grew friendly with Liam Bilby, a Syndicate operative. After Bilby was killed attempting to assassinate the Klingon ambassador, O'Brien took in his cat, Chester, as a family pet, and paid money into an account for his wife. Following the death of Jadzia Dax at the end of 2374, Miles took part in the Rotarran's successful assault on the Monac shipyards, a mission intended by Worf to get his wife into Sto-vo-kor. Later in 2375, Miles disappeared on New Sydney while attempting to track down Morica Bilby, Liam's wife, who had disappeared from her home on the planet. O'Brien's mission was unauthorised, and he received a reprimand as a result. Shortly before the end of the war, O'Brien accepted a position at Starfleet Academy as a professor of Engineering. Following the Battle of Cardassia, O'Brien departed Deep Space Nine for Earth, to take up this new role. As of stardate 49648.0, O'Brien had served aboard a half dozen starships, engaged in 232 separate combat engagements, and had been decorated by Starfleet on 15 occasions. (DS9: "Rules of Engagement", "Broken Link") Personal Family and Childhood O'Brien has traced his ancestry back to the 11th-century Irish king Brian Boru (whom he would occasionally play in a holosuite program). Another notable O'Brien ancestor includes Sean Aloysius O'Brien. O'Brien was raised on real food, his mother believed that replicated food was less nutritious, she even handled and cut actual meat. (TNG: "The Wounded") O'Brien had two brothers; his mother passed away in 2368, his father, Michael, remarried a year later - Miles had never met his new stepmother. (DS9: "Whispers) His relationship with his father had been a somewhat rocky one - Michael was the one who had pushed Miles to pursue his music career, making him practise at least once a day - and was damaged somewhat by his enlistment in Starfleet, although the two later reconciled. As a child, O'Brien had a morbid fear of spiders. Following a mission on Zayra IV, where O'Brien was forced to make a critical repair in a Jefferies tube containing Talarian hook spiders, he found that his fear had lessened, and he later kept a Lycosa tarantula, named Christina, as a pet aboard the Enterprise-D. He married Keiko Ishikawa aboard the Enterprise in 2367, and the couple had their first child, Molly, the following year. (TNG: "Data's Day", "Disaster") Both joined O'Brien aboard DS9, albeit reluctantly on Keiko's part, where their second child, Kirayoshi, was born in 2372. O'Brien had a difficult time dealing with this pregnancy, mainly as a result of the baby's forced 'relocation' to Kira Nerys, which saw the two struggling with a mutual attraction - one which both agreed to put aside. As a ritual, before going into battle, O'Brien recorded a "goodbye" message for his family in the event of his death. Each time he did so, he believed it would be the one they would hear. Between 2367 and 2372, he had recorded a total of eleven messages. (DS9: "To the Death") Friends and Pastimes During his childhood, Miles developed keen construction skills. Despite doing poorly in mechanical aptitude tests, he spent many hours constructing model starship engines, and models of subspace transciever assemblies. He also did a great deal of hiking, climbing mountains in his native Ireland. Aboard Deep Space 9, O'Brien forged a strong friendship with Julian Bashir, the station's CMO. Their friendly rivalry encompassed racquetball, darts, and other activities. The two were frequent users of the station's holosuites, usually for historical reenactments of events such as the Battle of Britain, and even created their own programs, including an accurate depiction of the Alamo. O'Brien's one continuing passion was kayaking, and he frequently found himself visiting Sickbay or DS9's Infirmary for shoulder injuries sustained during programs. This eventually resulted in humeral socket replacement surgery in 2371 (although the injury that necessitated the operation was not sustained through the sport). This did not end O'Brien's shoulder problems - he suffered a torn rotator cuff four years later, whilst practising baseball with the Niners. He maintained his love of music, playing the cello in a string quartet aboard the Enterprise. O'Brien was also a fan of detective fiction novels, particularly Mickey Spillane and his character Mike Hammer, a preference he passed on to Odo, to whom he frequently loaned books. A favored drink of O'Brien's was coffee - Jamaican blend, double strong, double sweet. (DS9: "Armageddon Game") Alternate realities In the anti-time past created by Q, Miles was puzzled by Captain Jean-Luc Picard's knowledge of his hobby building model ships. The time-traveling Picard learned the information about Miles in a conversation years later. (TNG: "All Good Things...") In the mirror universe, Miles' counterpart was a Terran slave on Terok Nor (mirror). (DS9: "Crossover") In an alternate timeline created when the [[USS Defiant (NX-74205)|USS Defiant]] crashed on Gaia, O'Brien had many descendants among the crash survivors, including descendant Miranda. (DS9: "Children of Time") O'Brien, Miles O'Brien, Miles O'Brien, Miles O'Brien, Miles de:Miles O'Brien